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Search Results for: will
Kale Pesto With Walnuts
Yummy kale pesto without pine nuts made in my favorite food processor (the parts go in the dishwasher!) is the best meal prep ingredient ever! It doesn't require fresh herbs so can be made year-round and keep beautifully in the freezer.
Here's the thing:
I don't actually hate cooking entire meals on the weeknights. I find it relaxing to put our kids to bed, chat with Jay, and make an entire meal start to finish.
Buthoweveralso, when I do that it means that we eat dinner at 9pm and then don't go to bed until 11, and that's not OK. SO, I mostly prep some things and then cook one or two items when we're ready to eat.
...Five for Friday
How to Be Happier Right Now
Five for Friday
Loaded Baked Potato Salad (for Labor Day!)
Here's all we need to finish out the summer (or get ready for tailgating!).
Loaded Baked Potato Salad with all the creamy dreamy stuff dreams are made of.
...Gluten Free 7-Ingredient Banana Cake
I am not gluten free. But! A lot of people are, and all of the kinds of people in this world should be allowed to eat cake. Yummy cake. Intentional cake. Cake with chocolate chips on top of it that are slightly melted like icing.
This recipe came to me via Instagram; someone that I hadn't heard of before posted the recipe and it included almond flour which I HAPPENED to have a bag of in my freezer, among other gluten free ingredients that need a home.
...Five for Friday
Spicy Sambal Pork Noodles
spicy noodle bowls made with ramen noodles (or any pasta you like!) are the perfect mid-week alternative to spaghetti with meat sauce. this asian noodle bowl is the best!
What do you watch while you eat dinner?
Do not tell me that you talk to other people. I won't hear it.
...Six.
Five for Friday
Summery Caprese Cobb Salad with Grilled Chicken
A summertime recipe for cobb salad that includes grilled chicken AND corn plus caprese salad ingredients with fresh, juicy tomatoes, mozzarella, and a super easy basil pesto salad dressing that is out of this world delish. This is also a great meal prep kale salad!
Oh hello, here's a salad we can SINK OUR TEETH INTO. Finally.
I'm all about a main dish salad. I order them often in restaurants because I want to, not because I'm punishing myself for something or feel like I should. BUT, the salad's gotta be a good one. House made dressings, fun protein choices, crunchy things, etc. If salads on a menu don't look good, I'm heading straight for ordering a dinner entree during brunch because the smothered chicken is just always so legit, right?
...Five for Friday
Summertime Green Curry {vegan}
Today in Quick Dinners With Four-ish Ingredients:
And also What To Do With Baked Tofu!
This is a dinner that I made specifically to pair with the baked tofu from Monday, and one that we make all the time. We love Thai food, and Thai green curry is something that I order almost every time I go to a Thai restaurant.
Curry, though, can take some time to simmer and build flavors. I love doing that BUT definitely only on weekends. Weekdays aren't the time to add little pinches of this and that or be dealing with whole lemongrass and jalapenos, nope. So THIS Thai Curry is the polar opposite in terms of effort: Vegetables, coconut milk, green curry paste. Full stop, done and done.
...Easy Baked Tofu
Hello and welcome to your Monday! I made us the easiest marinated baked tofu bites ever.
File this one in your "things to make all the time" list of fave recipes.
This, my friends, is baked tofu. We make some version of tofu two or more times per week, and even more since both kids started eating solid foods. Jay and I both eat meat, but the meat in our food system is, let's say, dicey at best. We try to buy lots of local meat, and with that comes a higher food cost. SO, we offset that by eating vegetarian several days per week, so that when we do eat meat we feel good about it while not completely going broke on fancy groceries.
...Five for Friday
Beach Week Photo Dump
Crispy Smashed Potatoes + Garlic Butter Sauce
The most yummy crispy smashed potatoes from Bon Appetit! This is one of my favorite tiny potato recipes: tender boiled potatoes smashed and drizzled with garlic butter sauce, then baked to crispy, salty, buttery submission. Make. These. Now.
Don't leave me. It feels good. Embrace it. The garlic butter, that is.
Hello and welcome to your new favorite side dish! These smashed potatoes are YUMMY, a word that honestly should be used to describe as many of your foods as possible. You only live once, potatoes are a vegetable, and garlic butter is the savory icing on the potato cake that we all need to use whenever we possibly can.
These garlic butter potatoes are, frankly, the ideal potato side dish. They go perfectly with some easy stewed cabbage, add some fish and chicken and here we go, dinner is handled?
These are my version of Bon Appetit's smashed potatoes: they're simple to make in just a few steps and the end result is a fluffy-on-the-inside, crispy-on-the-outside cross between mashed potatoes and french fries that is REALLY yummy. Trust.
...Five for Friday
Motherhood Right Now
Motherhood right now is....Five for Friday
Cauliflower Adobo {vegan}
Adobo Cauliflower Rice Bowl: A perfect dinner, comin' atcha! One of our favorite vegan cauliflower recipes is here for all of our weeknight dinner needs. This is a vegan Filipino adobo sauce with seared cauliflower that makes the most delicious 30 minute vegan dinner!
We are always on the hunt for light and/or vegetarian dinners, and this one kept popping up on my Instagram several weeks ago. I'm a huge fan of Chicken Adobo, a soy/vinegar Filipino dish. This vegetarian adobo version features cauliflower as the main ingredient and is different + much lighter.
The sauce here is suuuuuper umami and bright from the vinegar, which I love. There's some sugar here as well, and I love how pungent the sauce gets after it simmers a little bit.
The method here is so simple: sear some cauliflower for tons of flavor, then simmer it in the adobo sauce for a few minutes until it's cooked. The whole dish is done in 30 minutes, maybe less, and YES PLEASE extra sauce all over some rice you'll serve this.
...Five for Friday
Five for Friday
Nursing and Pumping at Eight Months
Oh hey! Back at this again.
To say the last few months have been a blur would be a serious understatement. People definitely hinted that moving from one kid to two was, let's say, challenging, but I, the Maternal Mental Health Professional, am here to tell you that it's been somewhat surprising.
...Roasted Carrots with Bacon
On New Year's Eve of....last year? this year? how do we describe this? the one that just happened. Let's start again.
The last time we had a New Year's Eve, Jay and I went to a fancy dinner with our best friends. It was excellent. Will was just a few weeks old, we felt free, and the food was fabulous.
The dinner was one of those "four courses choose one thing each course" fixed price special event dealios, and for most of the courses we each chose different stuff so we could try everything. And almost without fail, the vegetables were the best things on the table. I'm talking pate vs a raw cauliflower thing, greens vs pork belly - on paper, the meat stuff should have been the best.
...Bacon Cheddar Skillet Pizza with Caramelized Onions
You know that when you make pizza in a cast iron skillet it's done in 10 minutes, right?
That means you can be EATING PIZZA in ten minutes.
Beck's favorite food HANDS DOWN is pizza. When we are talking restaurants is always what she "suggests" (shouts for), what she'll gobble up the fastest, and what she'll do almost anything for, behavior-wise. Yes, we bribe with food. I'm cool with it.
...How To Make Baby Food Purees With No Recipe
You buy pouches! Obviously.
We are in the thick of baby feeding! It's so much fun. I realize not everyone gives a hoot about baby food, but I've all of a sudden been inundated with targeted baby food ads for some company that charges OVER FOUR DOLLARS for a jar of baby food.
No, just no. I buy a good amount of baby food to supplement what I make for Will, but I do find that making it myself is cheap and takes hardly any time at all with the tiniest bit of planning. I also don't use recipes because HE'S A BABY but I want him to BE AN ADULT at some point, so I puree regular food with enough water to make it a puree and that is literally the recipe.
You're welcome.
...Five for Friday
Our Favorite Microplane + Giveaway (CLOSED)!
NOTE: this giveaway is closed.
We're cooking with Beck today!
You saw her Monday in the Chinese Beef and Zucchini Bowls, get after those if you haven't already.
Beck is at an age where she can actually DO a few things in the kitchen, and I love it so much. She has an understanding of how to hold handles of pots and not use her other hand to stabilize a hot pot (thank goodness), she can stir and add ingredients, and whooboy will she taste almost anything if she's made it herself.
...Chinese Ground Beef and Zucchini
Perfect for summer garden zucchini or year round, these Chinese ground beef and zucchini bowls are SO good. Quick and easy, make-your-own-takeout style, and who doesn't love a rice bowl? No one is the answer. PS, if you have extra zucchini it'll turn into hibachi vegetables perfectly!
Oh hey, easy dinners that light up my life.
Are bowls over, or are we still good with everything we make going in shallow bowls with lots of toppings? Please say bowls aren't over.
These particular bowls are exceptionally delicious. We're working with a yummy brown sauce that comes together so quickly thanks to a Microplane grater that eliminates chopping of teeny things AND can get little kids involved.
Then, we have ground beef, zucchini from your summer garden (or, like, the store), and crunchy water chestnuts mainly because I adore them. This is one of those "regular" meals that is also highly flavorful and a perfect weeknight dinner.
...Five for Friday
Grilled Shrimp with Avocado Pico
Oh hi, stereotypical summer meal!
I've been cooking more low carb meals recently, and a struggle I have is finding meals that feel like a whole meal, not like there SHOULD have been mashed potatoes on the side of this steak, you know?
This is that. It's the most perfectly light but complete low carb/gluten free meal, and it's full of huge flavor to boot.
...Five for Friday
Basil Sauce with Broiled Chicken Breast
Here's our favorite summery weeknight dinner right here! Easy basil sauce (dairy free pesto without nuts, basically) and lemony broiled chicken with NO marinating time means a 30 minute dinner that is low carb, gluten free, dairy free, and filled with summery flavor thanks to fresh basil.
Oh hi, summer.
My basil plant is doing GREAT this year, in a new sunny spot from years past, so prepare yourself for a gazillion "but it's seasonal" basil-using recipes. You'll get no apologies from me on that one.
I've been playing around with how to broil chicken breasts, and after a few tries I'm definitely liking the method for a few reasons: It's super quick and doesn't smell up the house OR require walking outside to get to the grill. This particular broiled lemon chicken is broiled on just one side because the pieces of chicken are super thin. If you don't feel like cutting the chicken pieces in half (or buying thin-cut chicken) you don't have to, just flip the chicken and broil on the second side.
This entire meal is done in half an hour or even less if you make the basil sauce another day as part of meal prep. Let's do it!
...Five for Friday
Baby Gear: Lily Jade Diaper Bag
I feel like I say this about all baby gear that we like, but this is DEFINITELY my favorite thing. Maybe because it's a product for grownups too! Finally.
When I had Will, I knew I was going to need some kind of new diaper bag situation. Beck has all but gotten to the point where she requires very little out in public (can drink and eat without kid stuff at a restaurant, doesn't often get super dirty, etc), but I knew that having a new baby would bring new things to haul around that I'd completely forgotten about.
...Five for Friday
Chicken Kale Meatballs {gluten free}
I almost called these Superfood Meatballs, but Mark Bittman says (and I agree) that there are no superfoods, so I'm trying to take that word out of my vocabulary.
Are Gluten Free Meatballs just as exciting? I have no idea. I wanted to make a meatball that was full of good things but also yummy, and to me that's what these are. I also wanted a chicken meatball that didn't inherently feel like it had to be paired with a marinara sauce. These chicken kale meatballs would be great with tomato sauce, for sure, but I paired them with a light brown gravy that was silky and savory and SO good.
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